The Pain
by Airforce1990
Summary: Colby Grangers thoughts about what had happened in the Janus List and Trust Metric.


The physical pain eventually goes away, the pain from the needles, the pain of the bindings, the pain of not being able to breathe, the feeling of drowning, the sensations. However, the emotional pain stays. The feeling of being betrayed, the lies, and losing trust in people. Those stay with. During the day, during the night, every day of every week.

I didn't want to lie, to make my team think that I had betrayed them. I didn't want my team to find out about the Janus List, I didn't want them to arrest me, to walk me through the office with handcuffs around my wrist, I didn't want them to interrogate me. I didn't want them to believe that I had betrayed my team, that I betrayed my family, that I betrayed my country. I didn't want to lie. I didn't want them to believe that I was a spy and a traitor. But I knew that I needed to finish this, finish what I've spent two years working on, finishing the assignment that I was assigned too. I knew I could have told them the truth, that I was on an assignment to find a mole, I could have trusted them further because I knew that they weren't the mole, but in my mind, I knew that wasn't an option. Why? Because I still didn't know who was the mole, and I didn't want it getting back to them, so I didn't say anything. I kept with the lies and the betrayals. I let them arrest me, let them walk me through the office, let them interrogate me. I knew if I had stopped, after spending two years lying to everybody about everything, it would be all for nothing, so I kept with the assignment, I knew that I needed too. I had already lost something, lost something inside of me.

The nightmares come and go, but they stay the same. The flashbacks come and go, but they stay the same. The terror come and go, but it stays the same. I dream that I didn't survive, I dream that my team didn't believe me in the end, I dream of the pain. I wake up in a cold sweat, my hands tremble, my breathe catches, my heartbeat rises. The pictures come through my mind, I stop, I can't breathe, I can't think. The fear comes, I jump at sudden sounds, I feel paranoid walking down the street, I'm petrified of everything around me, my whole body shakes, I am sweating, my heartbeat rises and I try to catch my breath, I look around, not seeing anything.

I look at my friends, and I don't know why they trust me. Well, I still get looks from others, I get looks from people who doesn't know the whole story, I get looks from my friends. I feel like I am under a microscope, that people are watching me because of what I had done. I made my choices, I knew what I was doing. I was serving my country, I was being patriotic, like when I served my country in the Army, where I had served two tours in Afghanistan. I protected this country against a Chinese spy, someone who was supposed to protect this country, a person who was trusted to look after the people of a great nation. But he wasn't that person, instead, he betrayed his oath, an oath to 'defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same, taking the obligation freely.' Instead he didn't defend the US Constitution, he was the enemy, he was the enemy under the guise of a friend. He was the true betrayer, he betrayed his oath, his country, his family, and he betrayed me.

I knew at the end that I would die, the actual spy had said so. I knew I couldn't apologize, that I couldn't tell the truth, that everything was for nothing. The spy would get free and I would die, not knowing whether or not my team, my friends, had believed me. I felt a loss, for myself, for my family, for my friends. I knew I would miss them, I knew I could never take what had happened back, I regret that. While I was sitting in that chair, tied up in bindings, getting drugged up, I regretted that everything would have been for nothing.

The weird thing is, is that I don't remember being rescued. At least not all of it. Just bits and pieces. I hear sirens, and gunshots going off, I heard screaming, but other than that I don't remember anything else. So in my mind, I fill in the blanks. This is where some of my nightmares come in. I have nightmares about getting left behind, I get nightmares that the team wasn't in time, I get nightmares that the spy actually finished killing me, looking at his face when he knew it was done. Then I have nightmares that I did survived. I survived but nothing was the same. That the team didn't want me to come back. That they never forgave me. That they hate me.

All of this accumulates in the emotional pain. I know what it is. I had to deal with coming back from the war. The depression, the insomnia, the nightmares and flashbacks, I knew it was signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. I knew that I needed to talk to someone. To get better. But that pain, I feel like I deserved it. Like I was actually being punished and that I wanted to be punished for the lies, and the betrayal.

But I also know, that what I did, what I went through, I needed to do. It wasn't just an assignment, because I knew that I needed to protect my country from the unknown threats. That I would protect my friends and my family from that heartache. I had already lost something from the war, so I knew I couldn't burden others with this pain. So I took the assignment, I fulfilled the assignment. In the end, all that I remembered from the assignment is the pain, both the physical and emotional. All I remember is the pain.


End file.
